Just another WordPress.com site

Clothes Encounters

by Mary Stella on August 12, 2012

For my writers group meeting yesterday, I chose to wear a cute batik-inspired purple dress. I bought it many years ago and haven’t worn it in almost that long because it was too tight. Now it fits me and looks lovely. The buttons from the neck to the hem don’t gap or pull. The waist is a little defined. In it, I actually see the beginnings of a waist line again. I can also see my collar bones starting to take shape which looked nice in the scoop neck.

I traded out my customer flip flops for a cute pair of wedge heeled shoes. With every step, the absence of discomfort in my knee was evident.

While I love my casual lifestyle here in the Keys, now that I’ve lost a significant amount of weight, I’m remembering how much I enjoy “dressing up” sometimes. Slipping into a cute dress and knowing that I look good in it is a definite NSV. Oh, I’ve worn dresses even when I was my heaviest, but rarely had the mindset that I looked good. Instead, the most I hoped for was that I looked okay and not like a two legged cow in a shapeless mumu. I’ve always liked colors in my clothes, instead of relying only on basic black hoping to hide underneath. Now is no exception with bright turquoise, berry, purple and red garments hanging in the closet.

It feels good to put on smaller sized clothes, chosen with an eye to flatter rather than just to fit and cover up the flaws. I’m doing what I can to make the most of it, too. Before, all I really cared about with my oversized, flabby boobs was for them to be comfortable during the day. I’ve lost enough weight that the good bras I bought last week are both comfortable and adequately supportive. Seriously, the right bra can potentially improve one’s figure a great deal. I saw it as soon as I tried one of those bras on underneath a shirt I was considering. All last week, instead of reaching for the thin, most comfortable bra, I wore one of my new ones under my work T-shirts and smiled at the improvement.

Even in those T-shirts, I look better than I did. The only problem right now is that I’m between sizes. I can’t quite fit comfortably in a regular XL because of my boobs. Depending on the shirt, the XXLs I have either fit just a little loosely or are hanging on me like outsized sacks. Sometimes I even need to borrow a style twist from the teen set and knot the hem of the shirt so that it fits better and more neatly. That will do for now, but I already have three shirts hanging in my closet in the next smaller size. Every so often, I try one on and know that it won’t be long before I give up the larger ones all together.

Thinking of all this earlier today got me thinking about my measurements. I haven’t redone them since early February and was curious to see how those numbers have also changed. More than the weight loss affects my body shape and size. The increased exercise has an impact too. Eventually, I’ll also have to deal with pounds of sagging skin, but for right now, the reductions of inches are pretty cool and there isn’t a part of my body that hasn’t changed.

I’m pretty sure the numbers I’m about to share are pretty accurate. It’s harder to measure yourself than it was when my friend helped back in early February, but I’m not going to be too picky. Here goes:

Waist – down 5 inches.

Neck – down 2 inches

Bicep – down 2.75 inches

Forearm – down 2.5 inches

Chest – down 5 inches

Hips – down 8 inches

Thigh – down 6 inches

Calf – down 2.5 inches

No wonder I’m wearing significantly smaller sizes and clothes that were once snug are now baggy. It will be interesting to see how many more inches melt off by the end of the year!